Every time I read about a road fatality, I check to see if the people in the car were wearing seatbelts or the motorcyclist was wearing a helmet.
Oh, and if they were drinking.
Despite decades of education and laws, people still do shit like that, and they die or occasionally kill people.
I wonder if it’s a set of genes. The “Don’t Wear Seatbelts” gene or the “Drink While Driving” gene.
Sadly, they’re not linked, so sometimes a drunk driver wears a seatbelt, crashes, and lives.
It’ll take a few more generations to weed those genes out, I think.
Tag: commentary
Reach
Imagination is like a magical place of ideas and stories.
Reach in, and pull something out… that’s creativity.
In between you and that place is the world, with all its problems and stresses and frustrations, clouding your vision and making it hard to pull anything from there, blocking you.
But every now and then, when you hear something strange, or something looks kinda weird, the world glimmers and gives way, letting imagination peek through.
Reach through quickly!
Grab on to it!
Pull it out!
Grab it!
Missed!
Keep trying. Keep at it.
Don’t stop looking.
Don’t give up the search.
Cans
I never go outside. It’s not safe out there anymore.
I get everything delivered.
I know what time of year it is by the designs on the Coke cans.
They do those polar bears in winter, fireworks in summer, and scary stuff in Halloween time.
And Santa for Christmas.
A kid comes to deliver the Coke and groceries, and he takes the empties out to the corner for pickup.
“You drink so much of that stuff, why don’t you get the two-liter bottles?” says the kid.
I like it in cans.
And I told the store to send another kid.
Worn Out
Some people don’t like it when you say their name.
So, they say: “Yeah, that’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
How do you wear out a name by saying it?
I went up to Steve and said “Steve” a hundred times, and it came out the same every time, although I did need to sip my glass of water halfway through the hundred Steves.
When I was done, he was still Steve.
So I did it a thousand times. Ten thousand times.
No difference.
When Steve died, his name was on his headstone.
Cheap stone. It’ll wear out eventually.
Lemons and Tomatoes
The optimist takes the lemons that life hands him to make lemonade.
But when the artist has tomatoes thrown at him for his art, there are so many more options.
There’s a rich tomato bisque on the back burner there.
Smell that. It’s good, yes?
I made a bottle of ketchup the other day that’s thicker and richer than any store-brand ketchup you can buy.
What else is there on my stove? Oh, that’s a spaghetti sauce.
Here. Taste it. Try it.
A little more salt?
Let me take some out of this wound they tried to rub it in.
Savage – Eighth Anniversary
NOTE: This podcast is now 8 years old.
I’ve heard stories about jungle tribes that didn’t want their pictures taken because they thought that the camera would steal and capture their soul.
They also thought that there were tiny men inside the radio, cargo planes were gods that dropped gifts from heaven, and that the world was created by a giant fish laying the stars like eggs.
We’d have told them they were full of shit, but it’s kinda rude to be trashing people on their turf.
And they had spears. Lots of spears.
We’ll go back with guns next time.
(The mining company will cover the cost.)
Musicals
Before I ever read Dickens’ Oliver Twist, I saw a tape of the 1969 musical.
I find musicals stupid. People burst into song over the strangest shit. Everybody dances and spins and laughs and leaps.
Did something get in the water supply? A gas leak making everybody loony?
A little chasing, a little murder, and we find Fagin fumbling his wealth into the muck.
Poor guy. Oh well.
Later on, I read the book.
They hanged him?
Dude. Harsh.
I put the book back on the shelf, sigh, and load up the DVD.
Perhaps musicals aren’t so stupid after all.
Natural
Hanging over my typewriter is a famous quote:
“Be natural, my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art.”
So, I opened the window and tossed my typewriter, pens, and paper out into the street.
Leaving everything behind, I moved out of my apartment and set out for the hills.
There, in my cave, I worked on my novel, writing on tree bark using bird droppings and mud.
The publisher was shocked by my appearance, but took the submission.
And rejected it.
On the bright side, I did get cast in some GEICO commercials.
The Evolution Bazooka
Pastor Bailey doesn’t like evolution being taught in the local public schools, and he’s demanding that creationism be taught alongside it.
The faculty has refused to teach creationism, and the Science Department has put their heads together to prepare a formal response.
“BEHOLD!” shouts the wild-eyed Professor Jankins, brandishing a shiny silver tube. “THE EVOLUTION BAZOOKA!”
I tap my fingers on my desk. “Really, Stan?”
He laughs, points the bazooka at a potted plant, and pulls the trigger.
Nothing happens.
Later that afternoon, he realized the batteries had been put in backwards, and he turned a student into a chimpanzee.
The Tumbler
I keep my ideas for stories with me like a pouch full of interesting stones I collect during my walks.
When I get home, I load them all into a rock tumbler, add abrasive, and let the drum turn for a few hours.
I stop the drum, and pour it out on the table.
The surviving stones have had the rough edges knocked off of them, and one or two are nice and shiny.
And the rest have been pulverized to grit and dust.
Not all is lost, because they will serve as the abrasive for other ideas I have.